The Way of the Wicked
by Min Daae
Summary: But the way of the wicked will perish. -Psalms 1. Warnings for reference to rape, violence, death.


There is a sickness in me.

No one can see it, but it grows, and I lie in the dark with my eyes closed and feel it expanding, spreading thin filamented roots through my gut, around my heart. I don't know what it is made of, or what it means to do, but it is there, and I stand beside my mother's brother and look down at my chest, half expecting something to crawl forth at any moment. In my mind it is black and almost like a weasel, sharp snout, small clawed feet, coiled within my ribcage and gnawing at my heart.

It seems all my head is filled with fire and smoke these days, the smell of brimstone and the taste of ashes sour on my tongue.

_There is no screaming here. _He _does not need to hear it to know how I am suffering. It would be better if I could scream; then I would know I was still alive, or alive enough. I am not certain I exist anymore, not certain where my body ends and the darkness begins._

It is a curious thing, to watch oneself bend and break with a distance that can only be attained by madness or agony. I am certain that many could say that I am weak, that I am a coward. I have seen myself break; I know my measure far more than they will ever know their own. I know what it is to have one's soul taken into its more elementary pieces and then thrown back together in shards. All these things I know.

For this, I am damned?

What would you have me do? I ask them in my dreams as the cliff's edge looms before my feet. What would you have done? And they all say the same; I would die. I would die before betraying as you have betrayed. I would die one thousand times over rather than do as you have done.

And that is where the dreaming ends, before I begin to fall, but if I could, I would say to them that in saying that I know that they think dying is an easy thing to do, that it is only a matter of giving in and letting go of one's spirit and then it is Over.

Not with Him. For Him, it is an art, the torture so exquisite that even in the extremities of agony or heart or mind when they have become inseparable, there is no _real _pain, there is no _real _damage done, and there is the feeling that it could go on forever, and He promises that if you try to escape him by dying it will only be worse.

Perhaps he lies. I do not know.

_I never meant to come here, I tell myself, and He politely disagrees, "No lies, Moriquendi. You are here because it is meant to be so. You are here because you belong to me." I, who never belonged anywhere. And when I would have questioned, when I would have dared to disagree, my world was white with pain again as my chest tore open, and he whispered to me that if I only accepted, only accepted than He would be able to end it, all my pain, forever and ever…_

My chest does not burst open. I turn my head and look across the throne, but the space there is empty. Of course; Idril is with her child, her precious half-mortal son. I know very little anymore, stumbling through the shards of memory that He left me because they were necessary, and not all of them, I suspect, are even true, but what does it matter? If He says they are true, likely they will become so, or always were and I did not understand.

I do know that she is the cure for my disease, though; I sometimes dream of her lying entwined with me and her delicate hands peel back my skin and slip through my ribs, and extract the black thing, and with it the fine threads that are strangling me alive. And I die then, but I die clean and undiseased. Is that the best I can hope for? I don't know what else is left for me.

_I am dazed, swaying with exhaustion and nausea. Some servant of His takes my hand, spreads my fingers, and slices open my palm with a blade that has not seen a polishing rag since the earth was born. I do not feel the pain, lost somewhere in the dull, pounding heartbeat that has taken possession of me. _

_The stuff that they smear on my bleeding hand looks like black tar. It mingles with my blood, softens and drips a few red-black drops to the floor. I watch it fall as they grind it into the wound and I can almost feel the darkness seeping into my blood. _

_I think it is merciful that I remember nothing more. _

My father never liked my questions.

"How can something be full of nothing?" I remember asking him once, and he merely laughed at me, at my folly. If I had children, I could tell them now that this is what it means for something to be full of nothing. I am full of nothing.

It is standing on the walls of a city watching the darkness marching closer, and a mother holds her child weeping beside you, and it is not even that you are thinking of Idril, or of love, or of your mother. It is lying awake at night and making the decisions you should have to feel to make, and feeling nothing.

It is the sound your heart makes when the disease tightens fibrous fists around it and pushes up under your breastbone as if something calls it outward.

I know what they will say, if any survive this. He had no heart, they will say, and at this moment, I know that they are right.

_This is what it is, to watch a city fall. _

_A girl is cut nearly in two while trying to get her mother to rise. Her mother's pregnant body shudders as though even now it will struggle to give birth, but then the knives have cut her open again and again and again, and there will be no baby now. The woman who used to offer you flowers lies vacant-eyed on the steps, unable even to fight the creatures now riding her body. _

_A warrior turns toward me, sword raised, and I run him through before I realize that he practiced the sword with me, once. I watch his dying eyes, and even when he falls he still does not understand. I do not feel sorry for him. I have spared him a death far worse. _

They come to the city, and I go to Idril. They have broken the gates, and flood in bearing axes, swords, knives already fresh with blood. None of them touch me. I know where I am going. Her door opens at my touch, just as I have always dreamed it would do.

"Tuor is dead," I hear myself say as I enter. "I saw him fall, and the city will too. Come, we must go-"

Her hands jump to her mouth, and I want to scream. She does not have even the bare protection that I have from the ravening hordes, and if they want to take her body then they will have it, no matter what I may do. "No," she says.

"Yes," I say, urgently, and reach for her. "Please, hurry. There can't be much time."

Then her son is between us. "Where's Ata?" He wants to know, staring up at me with all the righteousness of his father. "Where is he?"

Get away from me, you stupid mutt brat, I want to say, but look back at Idril instead. "Please," I say again, and the boy shoves me.

"You're lying! He's not dead, Mama, he's-"

_No. _I strike him with the back of my hand and he falls aside, hard. I am safe, but you are not, I want to tell her, but she looks at me with horror and I have no choice left. "I will kill him," I said, stepping toward his stunned form on the floor, "If you do not come with me."

_I keep my sword at the boy's throat. He struggles, but the trickle of blood from a nick under his chin stills him. We move swiftly. I can see the hatred in Idril's eyes and I cannot care. The black thing, having emptied out my chest, burrows lower and begins gnawing through other tissue. _

"_Move," I snarl, and she glances over her shoulder at me, and I think she understands, at least, that this thing inside of me will devour me soon enough. I am burning, oh Eru, I am burning. _

_Her son falls, scrambling along the cliffs. I resist the urge to kick him and turn toward her. I could say anything, but she takes the words away. _

"_I'm sorry," she says, and I am confused, and her fingertips brush across my face with the softness of a butterfly. _

_From that moment on I am lost. _

_The boy's arms wrap with strangling tightness around my neck, his legs like a spider around my waist. I crash back into the rock wall and he loosens his grip with a cry, but by then it is too late. _

_He bears down on me, the light of vengeance in his eyes, and I turn toward Ireth to get her out of the way, but I have misunderstood. She is drawing her son away and in the moment before he reaches me I see the terrible hatred in her eyes and I could howl for grief. _

_His armored fist hits the side of my head and I drop to my knees. I can feel the blood begin to trickle down below my ear, and the second blow of his shield cuts into my back and drives me to the ground, and this is a familiar feeling, helpless, pain thrumming through my body like music through strings. I can feel my consciousness slipping away. He drags me to my feet. _

'_Eol Moriquendi, you are sentenced to die-'_

_What would you have me do? I want to scream into his face, but all my words have left me. _

_I am falling. _

_They will never find me, I know. My body withers as I fall. By the time I hit the ground, nothing will be left but the white threads of disease and the black gnawing thing._

_And I will be flying. _

"_I'm sorry," she said, and I don't understand. I don't understand. _


End file.
